Up until the 1970s, women working for NASA merely served as 'human computers' and scientists in the background, key to the development of space travel but often unrecognized. From Mary Jackson, the first African American female engineer, to Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, look back at the often forgotten women who helped pioneer space travel.

Amanda Douville

The pioneering women of NASA

Woman Computer with Microscope, March 1952

One of the famed "human computers" works with a microscope collecting data at Langley Research Center in March of 1952. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) hired women to serve as "computers" in the mid 1930s, doing the drudge work of reading data from test results (from film as shown here), calculating formulas and plotting results.